


Working for Progress

by RegalMisfortune



Series: The Tales of Others [4]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Percival Runs an Orchard and Valhalla Comes in and Asks for a Job, Percival is a bit of an asshole, Taking advantage of illiterate folks, Veteran Valhalla, Well the Orchard's under new ownership after years of neglect, because i got too many ocs who wants to interact with each other, mentions of the Gotoro-Ferngill War, proofreading? never heard it, this is set in a different verse than my other long fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 15:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15294282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: Percival finds a surprise employee- or rather, the employee finds him.He will use her to his advantage.





	Working for Progress

The old orchard needed a lot of work. Fences to fix- some of which needed to be replaced in entirety, trees to limb up or cut down in order to make room for younger, living trees. The old stone paths were in desperate need of attention, with grass overgrowing and burying much of it, and the two of the four moss-covered laborers’ shacks needed to be dismantled and the rubble taken away.

Percival tapped his pencil against the clipboard and frowned, mulling over the list before him. It so far didn’t include anything that needed to be done with the main house- and he knew for certainty _that_ would be a long one- but with spring flowers peeking out from the damp earth and the branches of many of the trees starting to bud out, he had to prioritize the caretaking and the future profit of the orchard over his personal comforts.

In fact, he had already started on the cleanup of the trees, marking which ones needed to come down due to rot and decay, which limbs needed to be trimmed accordingly. While the safety hazards that were the derelict shacks was a major concern, he had a limited timeframe to get the old dump producing with a reasonable profit margin by year's end. The trees came first, then the buildings.

Sliding the pencil under the metal clasp of the clipboard, Percival rose to his feet, reaching over to grasp the wood axe that he had left propped up on the steps of the front porch. While bending over, however, he couldn’t help but notice a glimpse of something far too green to be normal at this time of year, the large shape disappearing out of the corner of his eye.

Percival straightened up, the axe in one hand and the clipboard in the other, his lips thinning as he pressed them together while he searched for the unwelcomed green.

It didn’t take long at all. As it were, the owner of the green shirt did little to hide herself, rounding a marked fruit tree and admiring the red tape he had tied around its trunk with what seemed to be utter fascination and confusion, her large dark fingers stroking the ribbon with a feather-like caress.

She wasn’t a local. Percival checked the previous census and had done his research on all who lived in Pelican Town and its surrounding areas. This woman matched none of their descriptions, and from the worn leather sandals on her feet to the golden loops in her rather sharply-pointed ears, this was perhaps her first time setting foot in Stardew Valley at all.

Well, this certainly wouldn’t do. Trespassing was trespassing, and Percival wasn’t amused in the slightest as he walked over towards the strange woman who seemed to grow taller with every step closer, his fingers clenching around the handle of the axe with the intention of using it without a second thought if necessary.

The woman, who was turning out to be well over a handful of inches taller than he, seemed to have heard his approach, if by the way her long ears twitched before her face turned to follow the sound was something reliable to go by. A bright, brilliant smile crossed her face despite his rather sour expression, her purple eyes crinkling with absolute glee.

“Hello!” she called out, her voice deeper than he expected and thick with an unfamiliar accent. Not even from the Republic, then. “I was looking at trees!”

“You are trespassing,” Percival frowned at her, disregarding her greeting and chipperness with the blunt directness of his own tone. He was a bit surprised, however, that she gave no reaction to the trio of long, gnarly scars that ran from brow to jaw in a sweeping diagonal. Most who first met him reacted poorly, and his cold personality kept them further away as they should. But this odd woman didn’t even blink, continuing to smile away as if he was just a normal person. It was… unsettling.

The strange woman cocked her head in the same mimicked movement of a puppy bearing witness to something unfamiliar and odd. “Tres…passing?” she repeated slowly, rolling the _R_ in such a way that it made him blink at her, but showing no further emotion. “I walked road. Found trees. Looking for job!”

Her eyes fell onto his axe, and her entire frame perked up at the sight. “Cut trees? I can help!”

The woman’s Ferngillian wasn’t the greatest, but her reason for being on his property to begin with made Percival pause.

Naturally, his first instinct was to disregard everything she was saying and kick her off his land, but the logical part of his brain kicked in the moment she mentioned a job. He eyed her, not with the look of a disgruntled landowner finding someone who didn’t belong there, but one of a shrewd businessman, absently tapping at his clipboard with his fingers.

Between the woman’s looks and her accent, she wasn’t from Ferngill at all. A refugee, trying to escape the war with Gotoro, no doubt. She most likely lacked paperwork and citizenship rights, so he didn’t need to go through the tedious work of tax forms and employment outlines. She wouldn’t know the legal rights that she was due, nor the proper minimum wage her work should possess, paired with the fact that in this war-stretched economy, no one will be out looking for shortcuts in the law on the business level.

And she was a _massive_ giant of a woman, her shoulders broad and arms thicker than his legs. She wasn’t one to shy from hard labor, then, and judging by the way she carried nothing but a comically small bag slung across her shoulder, she was in dire need of some form of employment in order to survive for much longer if she didn’t want to resort- or keep resorting to- foraging about for food and shelter.

Making his decision in a heartbeat, Percival flipped the axe higher up in his hand, turning the handle over towards the large woman, his face smooth as stone and gave nothing away.

“Cut down the trees that are marked, and then we shall see.”

The woman’s face lit up like the sun overhead as she let her bag hit the ground with a muted thump in order to wrap her thick fingers around the handle of the axe. “I will do good!” she claimed with both cheer and determination.

Percival’s face remained impassive as he followed her with his silver eyes, testing the grip of the axe before nodding assuredly and walking around the tree to check for its lean. Well, at least she knew how to chop a tree down without blindly whaling at the wood. Still, he stood back and watched her work for several minutes, scrutinizing her posture and process before turning away to begin work on the sheds, now that one task was filled in by another.

There _was_ one shack standing well enough for her to use, after all. It was the furthest one away from the main house, nestled between tall stalks of grass, but it _could_ be used as a form of payment in the legal sense. He would have to write up a Terms of Service, and lodgings _could_ count as payment alone, and thus wouldn’t cut into his profits too much- if at all. The woman’s understanding of the language would let him get away with much in the fine print, and Percival couldn’t help but feel just a ghosting of a smile on his marred lips as the cracking splintering of wood sounded behind him as the dead tree gave way, following a loud whoop from the woman who brought it down.

Perhaps having a helping hand wouldn’t be so bad after all.


End file.
